It’s an important time for his pigeons — he can’t remember if he has 36 or 38. They’re shedding last year’s plumage, and growing the feathers that will take them through the next racing season. Moulting is a demanding process. The birds need plenty of corn, and oily seeds like canola and flax, a task Lopez sees to twice each day.

“I don’t look at it as work,” he said. “I guess I just like having birds, having a pet, having to feed something in the morning and night — something to take care of.”

Lopez is used to caring for pigeons. He did it as a boy, on a family farm in rural Bulacan, a province in the Philippines.

“It’s always been a part of our life,” he said.

At 20, Lopez is the youngest member of the Regina Racing Pigeon Club. The next youngest is 55 years old. Across the province, pigeon racers are getting older. With few exceptions, their children and grandchildren don’t seem to have much use for the sport.

But pigeon racing is a big deal in Asia. The Philippines alone now has more than 70 racing clubs, according to web directories. That interest carries over to Saskatchewan, where a growing population of young Filipino immigrants are carrying on the racing tradition.

“I think pigeon culture in the U.S. and North America is kind of dying,” Lopez said. “But then in Asia it’s just kind of booming. Younger guys are getting into it.”

Modern pigeon racing was born in Belgium, with the first major race dating back to 1818. Specially bred birds are raised in small shacks called lofts, and trained to fly back from increasingly long distances. Competitors release their birds from a single spot, often hundreds of kilometres away. They time their birds electronically, measure the distance back to each loft and crunch the numbers. The fastest bird wins the race.

The sport first spread to the UK, Germany and the Netherlands. European immigration brought it to North America by the late 19th century. In recent decades, it has gone global, with hundreds of clubs sprouting up on six continents. International demand has pushed up pigeon prices at auction — with top birds selling in the tens or hundreds of thousands. In 2015, a Chinese businessman bought a Belgian pigeon for about $400,000.

Lopez saw his first pigeon race as a child. Back then, he viewed pigeons as a hobby, or a form of therapy. “They can be stress relievers,” he said. “It makes you feel a lot better about your day.”

He soon learned that his hobby could be turned into a sport, and his pigeons into avian athletes.

“I realized there was a thing called racing pigeons,” he said. “There were actually people in my neighbourhood, my dad’s cousins, they actually had the top bird in the club.”

Lopez watched the races. But he never got a chance to join in. When he was 10, his family moved to Canada. He had to leave his birds behind.

Meanwhile, Juni Villafuerte was winning prize money at pigeon races near the Philippine capital, Manila. He joined a 5,000-member club and once saw his pigeon place third in a 520-kilometre race. It earned him 15,000 pesos, almost $400 Canadian.

Like Lopez, Villafuerte had to leave his pigeons in the Philippines when he came to Canada, about five years ago. He felt shock coming to a new country, and took time adapting to the culture and climate. In the Philippines, he remembers warm winter nights spent on the streets, staying up late, chatting with friends about pigeons. Suddenly, he was dealing with -30 C temperatures in Regina.

He wanted to race.

“In the Philippines it’s a big thing,” Villafuerte said. “You miss it if you’re in another country. Everything that brings you back home, you want it, for sure.”

Finding their way home

Lopez found the Regina Pigeon Racing Club when he was 17. He remembers his first visit. He was “a bit scared.” The members were much older, with some about 50 years his senior.

But he soon became part of what he calls “the pigeon community.” Older men like Marvin Gilewicz, 68, shared breeding tips, and even gave him birds to help build up his flock.

“The older guys are helping me out,” Lopez said. “They knew their stuff. I always asked them what to do for next year, and what should I be doing better. They always tell me to pair the best of the best.”

Now, Lopez is competing in multiple races each year, including a flight from Winnipeg back to Regina.

Orville Lopez spreads out a racing pigeon’s wing. This particular bird can travel 500 kilometres at an average speed of between 70 to 80 km/h.Michael Bell /
Regina Leader-Post

Gilewicz, a decades-long veteran of the Regina club, said membership has drifted between eight and 12 over his tenure. While he views the club as “stable,” he said younger relatives aren’t stepping up to take over. He knows the old timers won’t be around forever.

“We’ve had a lot of members that have passed away over the last couple years,” Gilewicz said. “With the Internet and everything moving so fast, and their careers, younger people are dropping out.”

Some clubs are in worse shape. Saskatoon’s went inactive just a few years ago. Former club president Ken King, 69, said they once had about 20 members, but “a lack of flyers” pushed that number deep into single digits.

“People are all getting older,” he said, “and we don’t have a lot of younger people coming up. Unfortunately a lot of them have passed away or gone into care homes where they don’t have pigeons.”

Moose Jaw has also hit tough times, according to club treasurer Bill Harris. In the ’80s, there was a schism among the city’s pigeon racers. Heavy competition produced “turmoil” and “a bit of a falling out.” But waning numbers forced the racers to mend the divisions and reunite.

Slowly, the remaining members are passing away, and so are their pigeons.

“Those pigeons get disbursed and there’s no one to take over,” Harris said. He remembers one man who passed his birds to his wife as he got sick. Now that he’s gone, she’s just waiting for the flock to die off.

“I’m not raising any baby ones,” Harris paraphrased her as saying. “When these ones are gone, they’re gone.”

Harris, 71, said that none of his four kids have much time for his pigeons. Instead, he’s shared some with Lopez — birds with “good potential.” Harris believes young men like Lopez could be the future of the sport. He said the Philippines are a big source of new recruits in Calgary and other large Canadian cities, as are India, China and Lebanon.

King agrees. He knows of four Filipino pigeon racers in Saskatoon and four in Prince Albert, all in their late 20s or 30s. He said they’re thinking of consolidating to form a united club – and he’ll be there to provide guidance.

“They’re projecting for young birds in 2018,” he said. “Their enthusiasm is greater than mine, but I said I would help them in any form or fashion.”

In Regina, Lopez isn’t the first Filipino racer, and he probably won’t be the last. Since 2006, Regina’s Filipino community has grown sevenfold, reaching 8,405 last year. Gilewicz is aware of two more “upcoming members” from the Philippines, still in the process of breeding and training their birds.

Villafuerte hopes to join them. He met Lopez through relatives. They got to talking, and discovered their mutual love of pigeons. Villafuerte now stops by to help out with the birds, and joins his friend for meetings at the club.

He said he’ll seek official membership as soon as he has his own backyard — big enough to hold a pigeon loft.

“Once I have my own place, I’ll have my own birds for sure,” Villafuerte said. Lopez has already promised him his pick of breeding birds to start a flock — just like Gilewicz and Harris did for him. Villafuerte already has his eye on some “colourful” pigeons.

But he’ll have to do his homework. When it comes to racing pigeons, it’s not beauty, but bloodlines, that makes a winner.

“Some pigeon bloodlines are only for distance,” Villafuerte said. “Some pigeons are small for just short distance. And then if you just cross them, I’m thinking, that would be nice-bred pigeons.”

Villafuerte said he’ll train his pigeons at least every second day, taking them a little further from their loft each time. First a few metres, then a few blocks, then kilometres and kilometres. They have to learn how to find their way home.

For Lopez, that’s the only thing that really matters.

“It doesn’t matter if you win the race or you lose the race,” he said. “The important thing for me is the bird comes back home.”

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